Roles
by Eatsscissors
Summary: Everybody plays them. JackSawyer


It's raining when they see their chance, finally, and blow their way up towards the sky again. Sawyer cannot say how many days they have been in captivity-the cells are too deep and too dark for the changing of the light-though they are not too dark for sound. It has rained thirty-two times since they were been thrown in there, more or less. There are a few times when Sawyer is not sure if what he had heard was actual rain, is the wind moving through the canopy above yards of thick, dense earth, or an echo within his own head. And there were other times when he had been…otherwise occupied, and not of a mind to listen for the sound of the rain at all. Sawyer's right shoulder still makes a strange popping sound in its socket every time that he tries to lift it higher than a 180-degree angle.

He cuts his eyes towards Kate, who is missing three of the fingernails from her right hand and has a series of bruises pressed darker than plums into the flesh of her throat. Her face is pale, her eyes are dark and flashing, and Sawyer does not ask her what she had been through while he and Jack had been trapped on the opposite side of the Others' compound and she had been alone. Freckles thrives on her secrets, always has, and while all three of them are splattered with blood, there is a great deal on Kate that is not her own.

"Can't you get him moving him faster?" Sawyer snaps at Kate. Even with the rain sluicing down over them all, filling their ears and muffling noise, he swears that he can hear the sounds of underbrush cracking, of people yelling, and of their margin for error growing smaller by the second.

Kate does not even bother with the energy that she needs to give him a dirty look. She leaves that to Jack, whose dark eyes pin Sawyer against his own insecurities like a butterfly to a board. They see right through Sawyer's smirk, as they always have, and right away Sawyer can feel that smirk turning into a scowl.

Jack's leg is crimson from the kneecap down. If he sees the way that Sawyer's gaze flicks downwards to take in the blood, then he's smart enough not to make mention of his notice. "Feel free to leave, Sawyer," Jack says. His voice is low, his skin is the dirty gray of unwashed linen, and there are dark circles etched into the skin beneath his eyes deeply enough to make him resemble an extra from a Romero film. "You chances of making it back to the camp before the Others catch you again are probably about fifty-fifty, but you're a betting man, aren't you?"

Sawyer feels his eyes as they narrowed even further, turning the world into a pair of twin slits. He stalks forward and, taking Jack's arm away from Kate, slides it across his own shoulders instead. Jack's skin is very warm, so much so that Sawyer can almost ignore the way that Jack is shivering faintly against him. "I like sure things better," Sawyer snaps, before finishing in a lower voice. "This ain't about you. I just don't want to try to wrestle you away from Freckles and then tell her that we're leaving you behind. Like to get an elbow planted in a sensitive place." And with the look that is flashing in Kate's eyes, it is probably in both her best interest and theirs if no one touches her until she gives them express permission to do so. Otherwise, she is like as not to shatter into a thousand different pieces, and catch them all with the shrapnel.

Jack makes a small sound, presumably one of disgust, from the back of his throat and shifts as if he wants to put much more distance between himself and Sawyer than his injured leg will allow. If not for the fact that Jack will only slow them all down by falling over and yelping fit to wake the dead, Sawyer figures that he would let him. "I know that, Sawyer," Jack says in a low voice, so soft and so tired that it makes Sawyer's head ache and almost makes him look away. "Believe me, you aren't fooling anyone. I wouldn't expect you to do anything that doesn't involve helping yourself."

Sawyer is not imagining the sounds of approach from behind them any longer. Exchanging a single wild-eyed look with Kate, Sawyer begins to drag Jack through the underbrush with little concern for his wounded leg, looking frequently over his shoulder as he does so and swearing in sync with Jack every time that they stumble over a rock or root that he does not see in the shadows. It continues to rain, and even though the water is still as warm as it always was, Sawyer can feel Jack shivering violently as he leans against Sawyer's shoulder.

---

"Fifteen," Sawyer announced grandly, tilting his head up so that he could regard the neatly tiled ceiling above them. He was leaning his shoulder against the Plexiglass wall that made him feel more like a rat in a particularly subtle and obscure experiment by the day, never mind that his shoulder ached as if had just been bum-rushed by a vicious linebacker. The joint was swollen, the skin beneath it stretched into shades of blue and shiny-black from the escaped blood pooling and forming bruises beneath the surface. That tended to happen when your shoulder was jerked out of socket three or four times in swift succession. Still, Sawyer would be damned before he backed away from the glass and gave them the satisfaction of knowing that they had hurt him, that they made any progress in cracking him.

Jack did not necessarily follow that philosophy. "What are you talking about?" he asked from the corner where he had heaved himself as soon as he was brought back from his latest round with the Others. One of his eyes was already swelling shut, and there was a red line running through his lower lip that still split open again and spilled a trickle of blood down his chin whenever he tried to speak too quickly. Sawyer wondered if Jack's trips were the same as Sawyer's own, a series of rapidly fired questions about the world outside that Sawyer refused to answer on general principle, even knowing that he was going to get socked for it, or answered with outrageous lies, and blood work that would be exclaimed over as if Sawyer somehow had the secret to cold fusion etched into his RNA. By mutual unspoken consent, he and Jack didn't talk about what happened when they went off on those little trips.

Sawyer jerked his head upwards to indicate the ceiling, beyond which a faint rat-a-tat-tat sound could still be heard. They air was more humid, too, and smelled faintly of earth and green. Wherever they were, it couldn't be that far beneath the surface, Sawyer thought, and wondered how long he would have to wait before someone on the other side of that glass grew careless. Hope, as it turned out, was a hard thing to kill.

"It's raining," Sawyer clarified when Jack's expression did not grow any less confused. "It was, what, raining every afternoon by the time that we were caught?"

Jack paused and considered before nodding finally. "Or near enough," he said. Jack was pale and withdrawn, and Sawyer had more often than not been talking solely for his own amusement as of late. He was willing to lay down money that Jack's thoughts were with Michael when he went into that distant, bitter place within his mind, and more specifically with wringing Michael's lying neck. That wasn't a poison that he would have thought Jack eager to taste. Sawyer guessed that they knew each other a good deal better now than they did before their capture.

"Two weeks," Sawyer said, half to himself, as he stared up at the ceiling. The crisp white tiles were too bland, too sanitary, to belong comfortably among the rich earth that Sawyer could smell but not see. He wondered sometimes if the island was frothing at the bit to kick the asses of these intruders as much as Sawyer was. "Gee, and as much fun as we're having, it doesn't seem like a day over two years. Going to have to thank someone personally for that."

Jack snorted out a startled laugh as Sawyer went back to sit next to him against the wall. "I never knew you to have a forgiving side, Sawyer," he said. His shoulder brushed against Sawyer's as Sawyer slid down the wall; Sawyer for a moment couldn't strangle the sound of pain that rose in his throat as the arm that was only recently put back into socket threatened to fall right out again. "I would have put it at two decades. Minimum."

"I have my moments." Sawyer stretched and then winced as his arm, after first holding a lengthy debate with his shoulder, decided that it might stay where it was for just a little while longer. There was a sound from somewhere else in the rabbit hole, so faint and far away that Sawyer was not sure that he was even hearing anything at all over the sound of the rain. It sounded like anything from a whistle to a scream. Another thing that Jack and Sawyer did not discuss was what Kate could be going through at that moment. It was all that kept them from hurling themselves against the clear wall and battering themselves blood until either the glass broke or they did.

Sawyer felt Jack's hands sliding beneath his shirt, touching the swollen, ugly knot that his shoulder has become. The doc's touch was gentle, his fingers so light that Sawyer could hardly feel them save for the calluses at the tips. He sighed and sagged further back against the wall as Jack said, "Jesus Christ, Sawyer, were you going to tell me about this?"

"So you could what?" Sawyer fired back without bothering to lift his head from the wall. "Whisk me off to the ER for a full set of X-rays? They ain't going to let either one of us die." Not yet, anyway, which was another one of those things that they didn't talk about. It was getting to be a long list, and Sawyer guessed that it was no mystery as to why most of their time was spent in silence.

Jack had a certain face that he made whenever he was forced to admit that Sawyer was right. So far as Sawyer was concerned, Jack didn't make it nearly enough, and it made marginally better what has been an altogether shitty run of days. So did Jack's fingers trailing along his skin, moving far past the point where Sawyer's bruises faded back into unblemished skin. Sawyer could make a crack here about doctors who take advantage of their patients and what Jack's insurance rates must be like back in the real world, but he didn't.

What he did do was part his lips beneath Jack's mouth when Jack finally did lean over to kiss him. Jack still tasted faintly of blood and old adrenaline; Sawyer was fairly certain that he did also. It was a steady part of their diet. Jack hesitated just slightly, as he always did, as if he thought that Sawyer was going to push him away, as if he thought that either one of them actually gave a damn about being a gentleman. Sawyer made a growling, impatient sound from the back of his throat and fisted his good hand through the front of Jack's shirt so that he could drag him closer, so that he could kiss him hard. As if that was the signal that he was waiting for, Jack grunted and pushed Sawyer backwards and away from the wall until he was flat on the floor as the kisses became more insistent. His hands were busy finding new places to roam. Sawyer scarcely had time to extend his good arm out and, mindful of the possibility of eyes, flip up his middle finger before his attention was drawn away by more important things, by skin on skin.

---

So they got lucky, Sawyer guesses that he can admit that much, even if his mood is so sour that he doesn't want to call anything short of a helicopter setting down in the middle of the jungle with plans to take them all off to Vegas lucky. The rain doesn't let up, if anything seems to be growing even heavier, until Sawyer expects to look down at his arms and see them wrinkling up like a couple of raisins. 'Ain't even cold,' Sawyer thinks as he trudges along, the doc little more than dead weight against his shoulder that every so often makes an effort to shuffle his feet through the undergrowth. Sticky and muggy as the jungle is ordinarily, they can all use a cool shower to sluice away the sweat and dirt that comes with living in it. That doesn't even get into the crawling sensation that Sawyer still has from being in the company of the Others for so long. Sawyer knows that this is mostly in his head, but it sure doesn't stop him from feeling as if someone has taken a brush and fainted a coating of pure evil over his skin. He's going to have to scrub until he's raw and burning in order to feel clean again. Sawyer casts his mind back longingly towards their hatch, the one controlled by the good guys, and thinks that he might fall to his knees and kiss the floor, second hand Brady Bunch furniture and all. It has a shower, food that doesn't make him think of hamster pellets, no random bouts of torture and, most importantly, an exit. Sweet lord, that thing has an exit.

'First thing I'm going to do,' Sawyer tells himself as he staggers along with Jack's arm slung across his shoulders and the good doctor doing next to nothing in the way of actually supplying forward motion for himself. Kate is a few paces ahead of them, making their trail with an easy assurance that would make Sawyer glad that there is at least one member of their party who knows what they're doing, if not for the taut, angry line of Kate's spine. She's playing pretend just as hard as the rest of them are, perhaps even more so. Jack is the only one among them who is not putting most of his energy into a front.

"You even know where we're going, Freckles?" Sawyer calls out to Kate, and never mind that none of them are supposed to be speaking any louder than a whisper. Back out here in the real world, or in what passes for it, they are all back to being the people that were assigned to them from the first day that they landed on this rock. Sawyer is damned good at his role, too, be that from honest talent or hours or long experience. He no longer has it within himself to tell, and anyway, there ain't any part of that script that has included playing nicely with others.

And it gets that tight line in Kate's back to soften, even if only for a second, before she spins around and fixes Sawyer with an annoyed look that reminds him of many other women that he's known. He spares a dark moment to wonder what in the hell happened to her on the other side of the compound that she doesn't want to share with the rest of the class. Thank God for small favors, Sawyer thinks as he arches his eyebrows at the Kate who faces him now. Her face is drained of blood, making every single one of those famous freckles of hers stand out in sharp relief and turning her even younger, more girl than woman, but the lightning that crashes in her eyes is adult and alive. She can be pissed at him all that she wants to be; Sawyer will still take an angry Kate over that dimestore mannequin who has been leading them through the jungle over the past several hours any day of the week.

"Away," Kate says in response to Sawyer's question before she flicks her eyes upwards and towards the angry, squalling sky. The continuing rain has long since washed the blood away from all of them, but Sawyer wonders if Kate's skin still itches as badly as his own. Even if she's basically told him that she doesn't know where they're going and he doesn't need to bother her by asking, he can't seem to stop himself from pushing. It's his job. Some days, he thinks that it's written as far down as his DNA.

"Away," Sawyer echoes Kate, and pauses so that he can shift Jack's weight to take the strain away from his aching shoulder. Jack makes a quiet noise that sounds as if it's being pulled unwillingly from between clenched teeth as his knee gets jostled, and Sawyer adjusts his grip into a more gentle one before he even realizes what he's doing. Jack's look is quick and penetrating. Sawyer ignores it. "Got to admit, Freckles, I was expecting a little more detail in that itinerary. 'Away' can mean a hell of a lot of things, including right straight into the belly of an even worst beast than the one that we just marched out of."

"Why don't you leave her alone, Sawyer?" Jack mutters in a voice pitched so low that only Sawyer and the rain can hear him. 'Can't you see that she's been through hell already?' is the unspoken subtext, as the disgust that Jack leaves to hang in the air still speaks volumes. Sawyer tastes something sour in the back of his throat.

"Why don't you fuck off, doc?" he mutters back without turning his head so that he would have to meet Jack's eyes. If he's back to being the asshole, then Jack's back to being the cowboy on his white horse, the one whose job it is to ride in and stop the people like Sawyer before they can get going too hard. Sawyer doesn't stop, will not allow himself to stop, and wonders at how their resident hero and all around tightass does not seem to be taking his usual satisfaction in a job well done. He still understands Freckles and how she's like to respond to anything that he says to her better in his sleep than Jack can on his best day. That is a small and ridiculous thing to be proud of, but Sawyer thinks that he is going to hang onto it for a little while longer all the same.

Kate turns again and glares at him, and again Sawyer sees that it's Kate once more rather than the mysterious stranger who replaces her at odd intervals. "Away is all that we need," she says. "I'll get my bearings back once the rain stops, but fro now it's covering our tracks for us." She grins at him, bitter and full of sharp edges that dare him to come forward and try his luck against one of them. "Unless you want to give it a whirl and see if you can do any better?"

Sawyer's navigation skills revolve around the back roads where you can cut your headlights and trust that the cops are not going to spend too much time looking for you and seedy bars where the back doors are not going to have those alarms built into them. He thinks that he'll pass. Wresting the lead from Kate had never been the point, anyway. "But you're taking so much joy in your work, Freckles," he says. He thinks that he can feel Jack smirking beside him, but refuses to turn his head so that he can be sure. "What kind of man would I be if I took that away from you?"

The corners of Kate's mouth twitch upwards, rain coming down so hard that Sawyer is almost convinced that he is imagining things. She turns and points to a dark shadow in the undergrowth that Sawyer would never have noticed if she had not been there with him. Another thing that the rain does for her, Sawyer realizes as he watches her extended arm, is help to mask how badly she is still trembling. "There's a cave there," Kate says. "We can rest until the rain stops."

"What about our trail?" Jack asks. Sawyer is interested to note that the rule that they should not speak above a whisper does not count when it's the good doctor talking. Of course it doesn't.

Kate flicks her eyes up at the sky again. "This will wash away anything that we leave behind," she says before a sudden twist overtakes her mouth and turns her into someone different again. "The Others are scary. They're still glorified city transplants. They don't track as well as they pretend to."

"And you are the real deal, babe," Sawyer assures her as he shrugs aside the ferns and steps into a shadow that opens up to become a fair-sized cave. Sawyer doesn't think that Jack has anything to worry about with his own caves being displaced, as this one is much longer than it is wide or tall, so that Jack and Sawyer have to hunch over to avoid striking their heads. Only Kate is able to stand comfortably. It is out of that godforsaken rain, though, and for that alone Sawyer is willing to give every single item in his stash right over to Kate in thanks. He sets Jack down against one of the rough stone walls less gently than he can and still with greater care than he would have, once, and ignores the press of Jack's gaze against the side of his neck.

Sawyer makes a soft sound of pleasure as he enjoys the sensation of no longer having water pounding down over his skin. Damned rain had felt as if it was even finding a way to leak inside his skull, like the beating of the telltale heart that would have driven him mad if he had stayed out in it for too much later. Sawyer can only think of one specific sin that he has committed here, and supposes that in the end it really does not matter all that much. He has enough stale ones to keep his dance card occupied for a long time to come.

"Atta girl, Kate," Sawyer says to her so that she'll know that he's there before he puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes gently. "I don't know how much of a water baby the doc is, but you might have just saved my sanity."

If Kate realizes that Sawyer has just used her real name, then she does not show it. The corners of her mouth flick up and into a smile that is more for social nicety than it is for anything else; neither one of them believes it. "Any time, Sawyer," she says.

The inside of the cave is dark and still cold in spite of the fact that they would all be sweating if not for the rain, but Kate does not allow them to light a fire. She points out that it makes little sense for them to waste the cover that the rain is giving them just so that they can tell the Others exactly where they are with a smoke signal. It makes sense, and there aren't any dry matches or wood to be had, anyway, but Sawyer makes sure that he voices his displeasure all the same. He notices Jack sliding a commiserating glance Kate's way from beneath his lashes and feels his jaw tighten.

"Let me see your hand, Kate," Jack says as soon as they are all settled into their respective positions against the walls and as comfortable as they are likely to get. He is using his no-nonsense leader voice. Sawyer makes a soft, disgusted sound from the back of his throat. Jack glances over at him, but says nothing.

Though she hesitates long enough to make the both of the them think that she is going to refuse, in the end Kate scoots over and holds out her wounded hand. Even in the darkness, Sawyer can see that she is trembling, and he understands why when Jack draws in his breath sharply. The rain has washed them all clean, and that makes the torn flesh at the ends of her fingers that much worse to look upon. Standing next to that, Sawyer reflects bitterly, Sayid was a precocious Cub Scout angling for his first merit badge.

"Goddamn, Freckles," Sawyer breathes, drawing close to her even though every word of her body language is telling him to stay away. Jack has risen from his position on the wall and is doing the same, so that Kate is flanked on either side by two men bent upon protecting her, even though the thing that she needed protection from is long past, while she continues to shake like a leaf in a strong wind.

Kate notices what the two of them are doing and barks out a laugh that sounds as if it hurts her before she shakes her head and presses her good hand over her mouth. "I'm okay," she says. "Really."

That is such a ridiculous and obviously untrue thing to say that Sawyer nearly laughs himself. Jack, he notices, does not look as if he shares the sentiment. He turns Kate's hand over in his own, cradling it as gently as he would a bird's egg, so that he can look at the places where Kate's nails should be. Outside of flinching once when Jack's thumb brushes against the cuticle accidentally, she stays very still. Jack's mouth twists.

"This needs to be cleaned and bandaged," Jack says before he glances out at the shimmering curtain of rainfall. "Neither of which I can do here." His eyes glitter and a muscle jumps in his jaw, so powerfully is he grinding his teeth together. Sawyer is more surprised when he does not begin to spit out teeth that he has snapped off at the gums. He wonders if Jack is feeling helpless, stranded out here without being able to do the job that he uses to define himself. He wonders if it hurts.

As if he knows that Sawyer is thinking about him, Jack glances up long enough for his eyes to flash against Sawyer's own, then to the place where each man has placed one of his hands against the small of Kate's back. There is scarcely three inches worth of space between their hands; neither one of them is moving.

---

"Twenty-three."

"Hmm?" His arm has not been jerked out of socket for at least three days. Sawyer was torn between being glad for this small moment of deliverance, and realizing that it was a sad, sad day when allowing all of his joints to remain in their proper place started to count as a good one. He was going to cling to the moment of peace while he had it, he decided instead, take it for what it was, and enjoy the moment of peace with the male scent pressed up against him. It was only slightly tinged with adrenaline and fear.

"Twenty-three," Jack said again, his voice muffled by the fact that his mouth was pressed against the corner of Sawyer's neck. His words sent vibrations running out across Sawyer's skin, and he liked it. The cell was kept damned cold, either through accident or design. That was not why Jack was staying so close. This was a revelation to Sawyer, and one that he could not help but reach out and touch over and over again even though he fears that it will cut him each time. Identity was not supposed to be fluid like this; people were not supposed to be able to reinvent themselves at will. The dice were cast in Sawyer's story a long time ago, he knew this. Any possibility of a different final outcome was viewed with the same half-wary, half-hopeful expression that an animal that has been kept tethered for months or years might view the sudden chance of escape opening up before it.

"Oh," Sawyer said when the silence dragged on for too long and Jack pulled himself away from his neck so that he could look at Sawyer curiously. It was a fragile peace that they had here, and Sawyer didn't want to shatter it. He kept half of his attention turned towards the sterile white hallway that is the perfect accessory to their sterile white cell, and the Others have a knack for interrupting moments when he and Jack are struggling back from the brink of insanity with fresh horror.

As those were not pleasant thoughts, Sawyer chose to distract himself with the gleaming and the fake instead. He always did have a weakness for things that glittered, be they exotic women or easy money, and it had gotten him into trouble more times than he could count. He lifted his head towards the ceiling instead. Jack was right. Sawyer could hear the patter of rain coming down on the roof some indeterminate distance above their heads, like impatient fingers being drummed across a tabletop. The smell of loam had been creeping up on him for long moments before he had even realized that it was there.

It was damning them, that sound and that smell, Sawyer realized with a sudden jolt. He sat up so abruptly that Jack would up being shrugged from the crook of his neck and shoulder and had to move quickly so that he could catch himself on his elbow. The look that he flashed Sawyer from the floor was annoyed and a little dazed, enough to make Sawyer wonder if they weren't being fed some kind of sedative in that tasteless porridge crap that they had been eating on what Sawyer assumed to be a twice-daily schedule. It was damned hard to tell when the lights never went out to reflect the solar cycle. That stuff was such garbage that Sawyer did not think that he or Jack would even notice if it had been laced with gasoline until it was too late. Worse, though, was the rain, the rain and the heady, earthy scent that it brought with it, that had always reminded Sawyer of growing things when he was small. It made him want to sleep and not do much of anything else beyond that.

Twenty-three rains. That translated to about three weeks, which meant that the chances of someone swooping in from the outside to rescue them were slim enough to make even the boldest betting man pause before he set his money down. "We got to get out of here," Sawyer said, forgetting for the moment to keep his voice pitched low enough to full any possible electronic bugs.

Jack stared at him as if Sawyer had just said the stupidest series of words that Jack had ever strung together in a sentence in his life, a look that Sawyer was well-used to at this point, and maybe he had. This wasn't exactly a hotel room that they were staying in, where the only thing standing between them and the outside was a door whose knob needed to be jiggled just so. While Sawyer hopped to his feet and began pacing around their enclosure like a tiger that had just begin to remember that it should not be in a cage, his entire body thrumming with restless energy now that he had finally been released from sleep, Jack stayed on the floor.

"No shit, Sherlock," Jack said, and like all of the other times that Jack had sworn in front of him, Sawyer had to pause and stare for a moment before he was even sure that he was hearing things correctly. It didn't matter how often Jack cursed or showed, horror of horrors, actual human fallibility, Sawyer thought that it was always going to be like the first time all over again.

Seeing the look of surprise that crossed Sawyer's face and attributing it to another cause altogether, Jack made a grand gesture with his arm that managed to encompass their entire cell. It was not a particularly ambitious move on Jack's part, as at the end of the day there was simply not a whole hell of a lot of cell that needed to be included. The room was hardly larger than a standard prison cell and only seemed larger because it was unburdened by furniture and is plastered from the floor to the ceiling in that endless, retina-burning _white_. It made Sawyer want to put his foot through the wall, if he didn't already know that all he was going to wind up with as a result was a sore foot and one hell of a fuming temper. The first couple of days had been interesting ones.

"Do you see any way to do that, Sawyer?" Jack continued. There was a rasp to his voice as he spoke, as if it had been used either too much or too little as of late. Knowing some of the things that go on when one or both of them are taken away, Sawyer did not need to ask which one of those options that Jack is struggling with. He thought that it was anger instead, though, and that made Sawyer angry himself, angry because Jack was responding by keeping it locked down and under control, choosing to sleep rather than to get up. "Unless you have a plan to tunnel through the ceiling."

Thinking of the sound of the rain and the smell of the loam, Sawyer realized that the idea might not even be as far-fetched as Jack's snotty tone would imply. He tipped his head up to the give the blank and somehow taunting tiles a speculative look before he met Jack's eyes again and realized that Jack looked almost amused as he watched what Sawyer was doing.

Jack still had not gotten to his feet. Sawyer considered him through narrowed eyes for a moment before he walked over and, very calmly, kicked Jack in the ankle as hard as he could.

"Ow!" Jack put his hand protectively in front of his leg so that Sawyer could not kick him again and glared. As amused as Sawyer was by the spectacle of a doctor so willing to endanger his hands, he was more pleased to see that Jack was not keeping himself shuttered and hooded any longer. "The fuck was that for?"

Sawyer took his customary second to pause and absorb the obscenity before he continued, but he was grinning once he did. "Get up and do your job, hero," Sawyer snapped at him, and was rewarded by a flash in Jack's dark eyes. "I ain't going to do it for you." Sawyer felt a moment of trepidation as Jack got back up to his feet that he could neither control nor shove away and ignore, as he wondered if forcing Jack to get up and do his job again is really the best thing to do, all things considered. That could mean that it will all go back to the way that it was before. That might be a small and selfish thought, but small and selfish thoughts were what Sawyer specialized in, and he had never been successful in pushing them away.

Jack put his hand against the small of Sawyer's back as he passed him in order to begin examining their cell, as if he can feel Sawyer's anxiety without him needing to say a word. Sawyer was caught between two extremes, reassurance and panic, and found himself rooted in place without being able to choose either option.

---

Sawyer advocates for pushing forward as soon as they catch their breath again, never mind that the sound of the rain falling on his head might drive him right out of his skull again within five minutes, but Kate puts her foot down and refuses. The rain is washing their trail away, she insists, and as such they should take advantage of it and let the Others wander as far in the opposite direction as possible before they set out again. Kate is a damned good liar, but so is Sawyer, and they are so fond of each other in the first place because like bleeds into like. Sawyer sees the way that she glances at Jack and the blood that soaks his jeans from the knee down and then has darkened there, unable to dry in the humid tropical air. It would not be long before the blood begins to smell. Sawyer cannot help but wonder how long it will be afterwards before Jack begins to feel feverish and weak, before the same angry red lines that so terrified Sawyer when he had first seen them snaking out from the wound in his own shoulder begin to make themselves known in Jack's own leg. They won't make it far without a doctor on their side, or the hero that Jack can be when he's not thinking about it too hard.

If that's all that it means, then Sawyer thinks that the mean, sour mood that has been in since their escape would be a lot more feigned. "Think I could use some sleep, anyway," he says gruffly before he turns away and towards the darker recesses of the cave. If he is going to sulk and brood, then at the very least he can cling to the shadows that encourage such behaviors.

Like bleeding into like. "Will you just talk to him already?" Kate says in an aggravated tone before Sawyer can get too far. She is standing at the cave entrance, watching the rain with her arms folded across her chest and her mangled hand hidden from view. The way that her eyes follow each drop, almost hungrily, makes Sawyer believe that she would lunge into the water and be gone if not for the reasons that she has already given.

One more thing that he and Kate had in common, as it was all that Sawyer himself can do to say within the cave, jittery and out of sorts as he is feeling at the moment. "It ain't nothin'," Sawyer says gruffly, taking in Kate's tired, slumped body at a glance. Even exhausted and wounded, she is still beautiful, and Sawyer wishes for a moment that he could transfer this tangled mess of feelings onto Kate and hope that they would then straighten themselves out again. As alike as the two of them are, they might not burn for long, but they would burn brightly all the same.

Damn Sawyer and his irrepressible need to keep reaching upwards.

"Like hell it's not," Kate says. She reaches up and pushes a few strands of dark hair from her eyes with her good hand, keeping the wounded one carefully concealed against her side. Sawyer figures this to be more from pain than self-consciousness, some kind of primitive protective urge that keeps animals from allowing anyone near them working its way up the evolutionary chain, and thinks that she will be even happier than Jack to get back to the hatch and a dose of painkillers. "Just go deal with it, okay? We don't have time for this crap." Though Kate's words are combative, her tone and posture are not.

Struck suddenly by how far away from Jack and himself she had been during the entire ordeal and how little he knew about what she had actually gone through, Sawyer reaches out, puts his arm around Kate's shoulders, and draws her close to him before he has the time to realize what he's doing. Kate stiffens until Sawyer thinks that she's going to sock him one, that cornered animal reaction that he can empathize with so well, until Sawyer presses his lips gently against the crown of her head and inhales the scent of her hair. "You're a real piece of work, Freckles," he murmurs into her curls. "You know that?"

"Yeah." She sighs and looks sad. "I know."

"You going to be all right?" The earnestness of Sawyer's tone shocks even him, and he knows by the way that Kate stiffens even further in his arms that she's feeling the same way.

Kate puts her good hand against Sawyer's chest and pushes him back very gently. "I've been through worse," she says. Her eyes ask Sawyer not to touch her again, at least not yet.

It is all that Sawyer can do to ignore that request and pull her close to him again, until he would be able to hear her heart thundering against his own. Only the knowledge that he is not supposed to be the savior, that is not his part to play, keeps his arms at his sides. Let Jack apologize for the wounded look in Kate's eyes and for not getting there sooner with their daring rescue; that is not Sawyer's style. He trails his fingers down the length of Kate's arm in the closest thing to mute appeal that he can offer before he leaves her and goes to sit against the wall opposite of Jack, folding his arms across the tops of his knees. As long and narrow as the cave is, he can stretch his legs out and touch Jack's feet with his own if he wants.

For a long moment, they stare at one another without saying a word.

---

It was the thirty-second time that the rain had fallen and brought with it the smell of the island itself into this sterile place. Sawyer hated it. He hated the way that it sank in here and took over, the way that it ran its hands across the cold, antiseptic white of this place and left its mark, the way that it would not allow him to forget that there was an outside world worth getting back to.

Sawyer heard a sound, so far away that he could not even be sure that it was real, a woman shrieking. He halted in his pacing with one foot still poised to take a step, all of his senses focused, all though of the rain driven straight out of his head. He hated those sounds whenever they came, too. He hated that they were just loud enough so that he had no doubt that he and Jack were meant to hear them, but they were still soft enough so that he could tell himself that he was imagining things and almost believe it. All the while the bland sameness of their cell continued to do its will-sapping work. He hated that there had to be a certain degree to Kate's distress before he was willing to hurl himself up again the glass and batter through it by whatever means necessary in order to go to her aid.

Behind Sawyer, Jack sat against the wall, hands braced against the tops of his knees, saying nothing. His gaze was fixed on the floor. Jack had been in a strange mood for hours, and Sawyer could not say why. The brief burst of energy that Sawyer had inspired days before had faded away shortly afterwards, with nothing so much as a wave to mark its passing. Sawyer supposed that he would have to be the hero now, and leave Jack to scramble for whatever role that he could find for himself in the void when all hell began to break loose.

Yeah, Sawyer reflected with no small amount of bitterness, if that was the was case, then they were both well and truly fucked.

He shrugged it off and continued to pace in the small area that was afforded to them, even though each pivot makes him think anew of the tiger being slowly driven insane by the children throwing pebbles up against the glass of its cage. Sawyer plucked at his shirt as he did so, the same long-sleeved on that he was captured in. It looked as if the Others were not all that interested in issuing standard prison wear. Bad for them, but good in the end for Sawyer. He tugged at the sleeve of his shirt to be sure that it was falling smoothly and had no betraying outline from underneath that would give him away.

It was even colder than normal in the depths of this labyrinth that the Others called home, and Sawyer's shirt was affording him so little protection at the moment that he might as well have been wearing nothing at all. He fought back the urge to rub at his arms. If the crash survivors have all learned ways to cope with the island on its own terms, save for quick trips into the hatch, then the Others are clinging to their technology as much as they can in an effort to pretend that the island does not exist at all. He and Jack curl around each other when they sleep as much for warmth as for comfort, much as Sawyer hates to name it that. You name something, you have power over it, Sawyer thinks, and realizes that he's already known that this is a lie for years. If that was the case, then he would have not wound up in Australia at all. Rather, once you name something, it winds up having power over you.

That probably made the fact that could not seem to stop calling Jack Hero, in his head or dangerously close to aloud on more than a few occasions, all the more troubling. He did not have the time to think about that then, so he shoved it away with a promise to come back later that he already knows he is going to do his damnedest not to keep. There are footsteps coming down the long hallway, what would be heavy, authoritarian stomping sounds if not for the glass that is taking all the sound from outside and absorbing it. Sawyer pressed his fingers against the glass and measured approach by the strength of the vibrations instead. Never let it be said that he was person who could not take advantage of what little opportunity does choose to give him. He rubs at his arm again. Much more of that particular nervous tic, and even Jack is going to be able to figure out that something is not right here.

A big man, ugly through a combination of hard living and mean temper, comes to a halt in front of the door that Sawyer likes to deride as the front of their hamster habitat. The man has never told Sawyer his name or otherwise said anything to him that requires more than two syllables or three brain cells at a time, but Sawyer calls him Bill. No particular reason, just that the boulder with the opposable thumbs has a temperament that reminds Sawyer of a mean son of a bitch that he knew while passing through California, years ago.

Behind Sawyer, Jack got slowly up to his feet. Sawyer could hear his boots scuffing on the tile, and he turned his head quickly to give Jack a quelling look accompanied by a quick shake of his head. Jack only frowned in response, bracing his hand against the wall for a moment as his balance went wobbly on him. He came back from his last visit with the Others with a thin tickle of blood running from one of his ears. Sawyer thought that he was struck much harder than he wanted to admit.

Bill pushes a button from outside of the cell that Sawyer cannot see now, but knows from being dragged fighting and cursing past it on more than one occasion is as white and lifeless as everything else in this place. The wall becomes a floor to ceiling door that slides back without a sound except for the faraway whir of carefully hidden machinery. The first time that he had watched it do that, and only seconds before he had thrown his first punch, Sawyer had remarked that he had seen doors do that in a lot of crappy science fiction films. His lip had bled for two days afterwards.

Now Bill stood with his arms folded over his chest, as he always did, waiting for Sawyer to make the first aggressive move. After thirty-two days, after all, Sawyer has yet to disappoint him. Bill must have been thinking that he had one hell of a creature of habit on his hands.

Sawyer's list of life skills might be short and pretty specific, but when you got right down to it, disappointing someone had never been a problem for him. He heard the short, ferocious charge from behind him as Jack lunged to his feet to come to the rescue, because that was what heroes did, and lunges across the short distance that made up the width of their cell. Either in spite of Sawyer's warning to stay the hell back or maybe even because of it, Jack was hell-bent on causing damage now. Sawyer stepped to the side and let him, even though after this amount of time they both knew that it was not going to do a hell of a lot of good. Jack caught Bill in the jaw with a punch that would have whipped Sawyer right around and perhaps even put him down on the ground; Bill absorbed the blow with so little fanfare that Sawyer wondered if the real secret of the Others was that they were down here manufacturing golems. A tiny dot of blood on the corner of his mouth, so small that Sawyer would not have noticed it at all if it had not caught the light and glittered just so, was the only sign that Jack had even hit Bill at all. That, and the way that Bill's eyes narrowed just a bit more, as if Jack was a puppy that had just peed on the carpet and posed no greater threat than that, and jerked his fist back to deliver a punch to Jack that would have knocked him back against the wall, likely would have put him unconscious, and would have put a bruise on his face that would darken to the color of an overripe plum before it began to fade. Sawyer's was on the corner of his mouth and was still the color of the sky moments before it unleashed the hail.

Before Bill could lay his hand on Jack, Sawyer straightened his elbow and allowed the ballpoint pen, snatched quickly two days before when he was supposed to be unconscious and thus there were not so many eyes on him, fall down and into his hand. It was a long road that took him from Tennessee to a shop in the middle of Nowhere, Australia with a gun that felt warm in his hands and smelled strongly of cordite even in the pouring rain, his mind so buzzing with shock that it had been all that he could do to form even simple thoughts. More than a few of the pit steps along the way included overcrowded foster homes where small kids learned to be fast and fight dirty. Sawyer swung.

He aimed high, for the soft flesh of Bill's throat, just about the only place on Bill's body that does not seem to be covered by a heavy layer of muscle and meanness. Even that was a matter of rolling the dice and seeing if he could come up lucky. Behind him, He heard Jack make a soft inhalation and then a sound that could even be the beginning of Sawyer's name. Time seemed to slow down in order for Sawyer to hear even that much; it speeds up again before he can hear the rest of what Jack intended to say, and the pen entered the flesh of Bill's neck with a wet squelching sound. He jerked it back quickly and then ducked so that he could avoid being hit in the face with a spray of blood.

'Never again,' Sawyer had thought while sitting in a seedy bar in the bad part of Sydney just hours after watching Frank Duckett die, his hands wrapped around a drink that was his first of the day no more than it would be his last. It had taken three before he had managed to make himself stop shaking. 'Never again.'

It was a good thing that he was flying back to the United States alone. That way, there was no one around who could remind him of how fundamentally bad he was at keeping his promises.

Sawyer dropped the weapon as soon as he had finished the job with it, watching Bill drop to the ground and a dark pool begin to spread from the jagged eye that Sawyer had put into his neck. He spun to help Jack. Sawyer reached his hand back for Jack's; Jack did not take it. The eyes that were staring back at Sawyer belong to an entirely different man than the one that Sawyer had known for the past month.

"What the hell did you _do_?" Jack said as Sawyer was left to drop his outstretched hand back to his side. He jerked his eyes away from Sawyer's and to the man who was now writhing on the floor. It did not matter that this was the man who had scrambled both of their brains like eggs on more than one occasion and surely would have killed them both once the Others were through, Jack's expression was disgusted.

Sawyer's entire body ran cold, even though he had not received a wound. He stared at the pen on the floor and felt an urge to rub the palms of his hands against his jeans before Jack's stare caused something deep inside of him to stir. He jerked his head up, defiant and angry. Jack's eyes carried a reflection the man that he had known Sawyer was even at the beginning, and that he had always known Sawyer was deep down where it counted. Fine, Sawyer thought, and could feel his lips pulling back from his teeth even though he had given them no command to do so. If that was the case, then he had better play his role to the hilt. Sawyer, after all, had always been an actor in front of an audience, had always considered it a triumph when he could live to disappoint.

"Looks to me like I was saving our lives, jackass," Sawyer snapped. He had not used that voice in nearly a month, save to rage against the Others while they continued to ignore anything that did not directly relate to their damnable, inescapable questions. It tore at his throat at the same time that it managed to feel _so_ fucking good. "You got anything else in your bag of tricks?"

Jack jerked backwards for a moment, as if Sawyer had actually struck him rather than prevented him from being struck. His lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. Jack looked as if all kinds of things are dancing behind his eyes, on the tip of his tongue, and just waiting to be unleashed so that they can ride the air. The past month disappears like dew retreating from the approach of the hot morning sun. If not for the fact that Sawyer can still remember the brush of fingers moving over his shoulder and soothing the tension out of bruised flesh, he would say that it had never happened at all.

Jack opened his mouth to tell Sawyer exactly what he thought of him, and like magic Sawyer was in character and ready to snarl back, when a quicksilver flash cut the air. Jack made a startled sound, but otherwise did not cry out. Sawyer did not know if he even had the time to do so, as Bill had barely pulled his knife out of Jack's leg before Sawyer was lifting up his booted foot and bringing it back down on Bill's wrist as hard as he could. The bigger that they are, the harder that they fall. The sound of bones breaking is the loudest one in the hallway. Sawyer pulls his boot back and kicks Bill in the head, hard, before he can make a sound that will bring fresh attention down on their heads. Sawyer was playing the villain again, that role resting heavily across his shoulders like a cloak that he could not shrug off even though he was sweltering beneath it, and he supposed that he should be feeling satisfaction here. Instead, he was closer to outright panic than he had been at any point since his adolescence.

Jack was doubled over, his hands pressed against the stab wound in his leg, blood leaking out around and over his fingers. Sawyer jerked himself out of his shock so that he could to Jack's side, but Jack waved him off before he could get too close. Drops of blood flew from the tips of his fingers and splattered against the wall. Sawyer was glad to see the perfect, pristine white shattered, glad in a way that scared him at the same time. The disgusted noise that he made from the back of his throat did not make the feeling go away.

"I'm fine," Jack said, meeting Sawyer's eyes but somehow still managing to look straight through him, as he did during that maddening period after Sawyer had taken the guns. "I don't need help." His leg was soaked in red from the knee down to the ankle.

'I don't need _your_ help,' was the subtext, and Sawyer did not know why Jack did not come out and say it. Of the doc's many flaws, cowardice had not been one of them until now. "Fine," Sawyer gritted from between teeth clenched together hard enough to make his head ache. He glared down at Bill's body, now unconscious. The wound on his throat was probably not going to kill him. Had Sawyer had the same knife that Bill stuck into Jack's leg, he does not think that he would have had any hesitation in killing him, promises or not. Sawyer's mouth was dry between one moment and the next, and controlling his shaking was no longer a matter of how much effort he exerted.

If Jack noticed this, then he did not comment. They rushed quickly down the hallway before further forces could arrive, found Kate, and did what they had to do. When the three of them burst out into the rain above, it soon washed the blood from his skin, but it was still several long moments before he could pull his shaking under control again.

---

After several minutes of meeting Sawyer stare for stare, Jack finally rolled his eyes as if he cannot believe that he is even entertaining something so childish and snaps, "You want to tell me what the hell is wrong with you, Sawyer?"

Sawyer smiles, a cat-like grin that he knows does not sit easily upon his face. Doesn't matter. Pretty is not the point. "Ain't a damned thing wrong with me, doc," he says, drawling his words out in a way that he knows to be as obnoxious as possible. If the way that Jack's eyes narrow is anything to go by, then he hasn't lost his touch. "Just enjoying the chance to stretch out in the wild open places again." Sawyer glances around the cramped cave and then allows himself a rueful snort. "Metaphorically speaking, anyway."

Jack glances towards Kate, who is hovering in the doorway in either an effort to give them privacy or because her personal space needs are just that much larger now. He makes a soft sound from the back of his throat again, as if he still cannot believe that he's actually going along with this. It gives Sawyer a twisted kind of satisfaction to know that he's the cause of it, before Jack leans forward and grabs quickly at his wrist before he can pull away. Off balance as he is against the wall, Sawyer cannot catch himself before Jack jerks him forward and practically into Jack's own lap. He barely moves in time before he would have landed squarely on Jack's injured leg.

"Knock it off," Jack says against Sawyer's mouth before he kisses him hard. Sawyer makes a moue of outrage and starts to pull away, but Jack has twined his fingers through Sawyer's hair to hold him fast and will not allow it. Jack continues to press his mouth to Sawyer's, alternating between soft and hard, until Sawyer's head is humming and his breath is coming fast. Jack kneads at Sawyer's sore shoulder, where the skin is just now beginning to pass from purple and into an ugly, muddy green. The doc missed his true calling as either a chiropractor or a hooker, with hands like that.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sawyer says when they finally have to part in order to breathe. He cannot seem to pull his forehead away from Jack's own, even if it does mean that he's falling out of character for a moment. Kate, he notices, is determinedly staring at the sheet of water falling down over the front of the cave as if it is the most fascinating thing that she has ever seen before in her life. "What you're seeing is what you're getting."

"Bullshit," Jack says as he continues to look at Sawyer with those dark, dark eyes. And that is the problem, one glance from those eyes makes someone want to be better, makes them think that they _can_ be better, and so it is such a crushing distance when they fall back down to earth again. "I've seen you. I've seen _you._ This is not him." Even though Jack's eyes are so close that Sawyer cannot hope to get away from them, the look there is so different from the one that he grew used to seeing in the weeks before they were captured that they might as well belong to a different person.

It doesn't belong to a different man, though, and that is what ultimately makes Sawyer jerk backwards so hard that it's a wonder that he does not pull his shoulder out of socket all over again. "You don't know a fucking thing," he snarls at Jack. By some kind of implicit agreement, he and Jack were keeping their argument to a series of hushed whispers, but Sawyer forgot and felt his voice rising for a moment towards a yell. Kate glances towards them quickly before she turns to face the rain again.

While he struggles to get away, Sawyer's weight shifts and he nearly comes down on Jack's injured leg. Only a split-second recalculation allows him to move in time. Sawyer does not even think about it, but Jack glances down, and his expression is as transformed as if he's just won a war. "Yes, I do," Jack says. Sawyer feels like an animal caught in a trap more than he does a man and is about to take a swing at Jack to that that feeling stop before Jack lets go of him, so suddenly that it is all that Sawyer can do not to tumble over backwards. "Fine, take off," Jack says, making a dismissive gesture. "But I know you a lot better than you think I do, and that's not going to go away."

That's not true, Sawyer thinks, cannot be true, or else Jack would be doing a lot looking at him like he did in the hallway. "You'll wish you hadn't," he warns instead. He can move away, but he does not, and never mind how ridiculous he must look crouching there like that.

Jack hesitates for a long moment before he says softly, "You did what you had to do, back there. I was startled, that's all." And the terrible thing is that Sawyer believes it, and more importantly _wants_ to believe it, because heroes don't lie. Even if they are uptight sons of bitches more often than they are not.

Sawyer shakes his head stubbornly but still does not move away, staying where he is a moment longer before Jack is able to coax him back down to sit by his side. Jack massages some of the tension from Sawyer's wounded shoulder as Kate announces, "The rain's stopped."

End


End file.
